McCaleb Wise

8321 Fern Lake Dr.

Mrs.Davis
Northern Oklahoma College
615 Monroe
Stillwater, Ok 74076

Dear Mrs.Davis,
My first piece of writing is my letter about teacher pay. I had to write this letter
for composition 2 as one of our essay’s for the year. I put this as my first
essay because I feel like it is definitely one of my better pieces of writing. I
really like how I was able to fight for something I really believe in. Growing up
I had always felt like teachers in the public school systems are very
underpaid. In this essay I thought I hit the topic right on the spot and had
good sources and facts that I gave in the essay. I feel like this was a very
important topic that is not talked about enough.
My second piece I added was an opinion piece from my government class
this semester. I really like this piece because we had to state our original
stance on a topic of our choosing and then argue the other point of view. This
was my favorite piece I have written even though academically it may not be
my best. I liked writing this piece so much because it was not only
challenging to basically argue against myself but I also had to force myself to
look at the other point of view on gun control. This was a great way for me to
be able to take a step back and look at the other point of view for not only the
purpose of the essay but also for the purpose of just everyday life.
My third essay I chose was my midterm essay for my composition 2 class as
well. This was a timed writing I had to do about my own beliefs. I really
struggled with this essay at first because I just felt like I was doin this one
wrong. I really liked getting to write this essay because I noty only got to write
about myself but I got to write about my belief in God’s plan for my life. This
was such a neat experience for me because it is not often I get to talk about
my faith in school. It was written almost as a story which is big for me
because I have always felt like I am better at storytelling than actual essay
writing.
My last essay is a writing from my comp one class. This is a research essay
about how online dating is affecting the dating world. I put this essay in
because I not only wanted to show how far I have come in my writing this
semester with this essay but also liked this essay. This was my first true
research essay I had ever written and I take pride in that because I didn’ty
really know what I was doing when I wrote it.
I believe I am a decently literate person in the terms that I can spell and
speak, but throughout high school I never exactly had to learn much or do
much of my own work. Where I went to school they never really made varsity
athletes do much of their own work and were more worried about their
performances on the field than their performance in the classroom. With me
being varsity football and baseball majority of my high school career and then
adding onto that by becoming a state champion for the school in cheerleading
my senior year my grades were basically handed to me. Now with that said
my parents were a different story and they tried their best to make me a good
student but despite their best efforts it never really worked. Growing up my
parents always got mad at the way I talk in my everyday life but I have always
been known to flip a switch and talk “properly” when I am needed too. My
coaches from my last university used to say I was “ghetto” because of the
way I talked but that was just me being me. But when you would ask the
school president or the athletic directors they would say I talked very well
mannered. When it comes to writing I have always considered that my weak
point. I have never thought I was very good at any type of writing other than
personal narratives or storytelling, but even then I did not necessarily think I
was good, I just thought I was better at that than any other type of writing. I
thought this because I never really wrote much work in high school and when
I did it always took me way longer than everyone else to write and I always
had to get help from a lot of classmates and my teachers. Then I got to NOC
and Mrs.Davis told me I was a good writer but I second guess myself and
overthink things. I still struggled though on our essays and struggled on how
to do research papers. Things still take me a while but I am starting to stop
second guessing myself as much and I am starting to be confident in my
writing and trusting that I am doing things the way I am supposed to.
My writing process is a little different from most peoples and definitely goes
against what teachers and professors would like us to do. My writing process
varies between two different things depending on the type of paper and the
length of the paper I have to write. It also varies on who I am writing the
paper for. On my short like one to two page essays for classes like
government I write the paper and then just edit it and turn it in all in one night.
I usually do not edit it too hard. I just look for missplet words and run on
sentences that need to be broken up. This is because most teachers that are
not english teachers do not grade writing style or format; they just grade the
content of the paper. As for when I write longer papers or papers for english
my writing process is a little differn’t. I will usually read the promt and find my
sources first that I need, if they are needed, while I think about the promt.
Then I will write a rough draft and completely edit it. On a separate day I will
go back and edit the paper again and relook over my sources to see if I can
find anything that fits better than what I used. After I do all that I read over my
paper one last time before submitting it.
The development I have had in my writing through the semester I feel is a
big one. At the beginning of the year I struggled to get even two decent pages
of writing done and did not feel confident in my ability to integrate source
work in my papers. Now I feel very confident when it comes to integrating
source work and writing a paper over two pages. I also struggled with finding
the right research and being able to understand what parts I needed to use to
actually support my writing. I account all of my growth to Mrs.Davis and am
truly blessed to of had her help me and teach me this semester. I have
learned more in this semester about writing an essay than I did in my 4 years
of high school and my first 2 years in college. This is the best I have done in a
composition class in college and the first time since middle school I have
written any of my essays, let alone all of them, by myself.
Thank you Mrs.Davis for putting up with me this semester and helping me
learn and have confidence in my own writing abilities.
Sincerely,
McCaleb Wise